It's time to admit that it is harder to be an armchair general or armchair geopolitical analyst than I used to think. Our current president makes that so. And to some extent, Putin is to blame.
So what is a retiree, with too much time on his hands, supposed to do? How about being an armchair media critic, especially when you live in a time when a new medium is developing, as You Tube is.
I have tolerated too many talking heads who speak half-English. Even Brits with non-rhotic English has become tiresome -- or should I say ti-uh-some?
Some guys flap their hands around on You Tube while over-hyping everything, like a salesman. And there are female talking heads who expose too much skin and wear too much makeup. Shameless!
There are several talking heads that I have a high opinion of. But the minute they show up on screen with an entire wall of bookshelves in the background and they talk like a professor, I should turn them off. Do they not understand that spoken-English is a different language than written-English? Their heads are always buried in some damn book and their speaking has become permanently damaged, apparently.
Watching these "videos" has helped me appreciate how good some people are as talkers. We think of writing as a skill that people need to work at, in order to be good at. The same for singers. But then we think that talking well is so easy that anybody can do it. Not so.
This was turned into a movie metaphor by the wonderful Jean Hagen ("Lina Lamont") in the classic movie, "Singing in the Rain." You Tube has many clips from that movie to link to, but not the scene I wanted. (You can probably watch it for free at tubitv.com or at You Tube, and without ads if you use the Brave browser on a PC, but not a phone.)
About 34 minutes into the movie, the head of movie company tells the silent-movie stars that they need to jump on the "talkie" bandwagon before they go passé. Lina Lamont says, "Well of course we tawk. Don't everybody?"
Now let's consider the success stories. My favorite talking head is George Galloway, on the MOATS channel. It doesn't hurt that he spent years in Parliament doing just that: speaking in public. Hitler's rose to power after he discovered his talent as a public speaker. Churchill was an accomplished speaker in Parliament. Much of his success as a writer might have resulted from pacing in front of a stenographer, instead of pounding away at his own typewriter. He spoke the words to her. They needed to sound good. Then it was turned into written prose that had the rhythm of good speech.
The long-suffering reader can see that I have slowly ratcheted my way to a standard stump speech: a prediction that written languages are largely obsolete in today's world.
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